Swampscott Select Board Seeks Answers On School Utility Reserve Fund Spending

SWAMPSCOTT, MA — Swampscott Select Board members requested clarification from the School Committee on how a $200,000 reserve fund was used to cover utilities during the 2025 budget season.

A Memorandum of Understanding dated May 1, 2024 said that town would appropriate from free (surplus) cash $200,000 "to fund the increased anticipated costs associated with the new (K-4) school building."

The MOU said the funds "can only be used to offset increased utility costs and are not for general use in the school and town budget."

The schools also had a line item in the budget for $175,000 to cover general utility costs.

Select Board member MaryEllen Fletcher during Wednesday night's tri-committee meeting of the Select Board, Finance Committee and School Committee questioned how $196,000 of the $200,00 was spent on utilities, and how she said the original $175,000 in dedicated spending for utilities was not first used on utilities before tapping the reserve fund for the $21,000 in overages — which she said should still leave $179,000 in the reserve fund.

"We were sent misinformation," Fletcher said at the meeting. "And I continue to try to get accurate information. ...

"I just want to be super clear here. I feel that the schools are in violation of the MOU. It always worries me with these MOUs."

School Committee Chair Glenn Paster said the Select Board should present "Incredibly specific" questions that it has on the spending in writing, and the School Committee would work to deliver the answers.

"I will be happy to get you that information one way or another," Paster said. "The answer is what the answer is, and then we can put this year's discussion behind us. If it's whatever it is, and I guess if you want to claw back the $179,00, we'll claw it back and cut whatever we have to cut."

The utility discussion was part of a larger one on how the town uses MOUs and reserve funds in relation to school spending.

School officials have, in the past, looked for true costs of what they call "fully funding our schools" to be included in annual increases of the general operating budgets, while compromises have later been struck to make reserve funds available through MOU to cover costs for one year without baking them into the recurring budget.

"Maybe now it's becoming the norm for us to do an MOU when maybe it should be a better budgeting practice where (the funding) is already included in there," Select Board member Danielle Leonard said.

"That's what I'm kind of driving at," Paster followed. "There is always going to be these one-offs. But the more we can put in the budget, I think the better. But, just to circle back (on the utility reserve fund), we'll get you the answer. Because we want to know the answer. I want to know the answer.

"We'll deal with whatever that answer is."

• 'Deeply Unfortunate': Swampscott School Committee Chair Resigns

The tri-committee meeting debate comes six weeks after then-School Committee Chair Amy O'Connor abruptly resigned from her seat after 12 years, citing an "an environment that had become untenable" within town governing and annual school budgeting.

"We should all take pause when someone with Amy's passion for public education chooses to step away because of an environment that had become untenable," Paster said following O'Connor's resignation, citing "long-standing divisions and an us vs. them mindset that pits town and school interests against each other."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)